Joseph Epstein reviews a writing book and spends most of his time describing the points raised in another book.
After thirty years of teaching a university course in something called advanced prose style, my accumulated wisdom on the subject, inspissated into a single thought, is that writing cannot be taught, though it can be learned—and that, friends, is the sound of one hand clapping. A. J. Liebling offers a complementary view, more concise and stripped of paradox, which runs: “The only way to write is well, and how you do it is your own damn business.”
…
In its subtlest sense style is a way of looking at the world, and an unusual or sophisticated way of doing so is not generally acquired early in life. This why good writers rarely arrive with the precocity of visual artists or musical composers or performers. Time is required to attain a point of view of sufficient depth to result in true style.
(via Books, Inq)
You know what? I think the idea of precocious musical or artistic geniuses is a myth.
Yes, there are people who are gifted musically or artistically, who are fall in love with some form of art and are therefore willing (and that, my friends, is vitally important) to work hard at it from an early age.
HOWEVER, what they demonstrate at that early age is not exactly great art . . . yet. The may be demonstrating tremendous mechanical skills, but the real genius, the real art, takes time and more work to really shine through.
Take Mozart. Yes, he composed his first pieces at the age of five. But they weren’t “brilliant” pieces; they were rather simplistic. It took work, and a lot of it, for his musical genius to appear.
Believe it or not, that quote is encouraging. Working hard at something can bring good results.